


A Map and Then You Lose Your Way

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-23
Updated: 2006-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:25:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam doesn't have a scar fetish. He just likes to know his way around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Map and Then You Lose Your Way

Dean has a scar on the small of his back, a crescent just big enough to curve around the end of Sam's thumb.

"What's this from?" Touching his fingertips to the arc of pale, raised skin, Sam imagines a fiery hand, a scalded print, the unwanted mark of an angry grasp.

"Fence."

Sam frowns. "Fence? Really?

Nodding into the pillow, Dean mumbles, "Yeah, a fence." He pushes himself up slightly, rubs a hand over his face and his messy hair, turns his head and lays it down again. "One of those spiky metal ones. Around a graveyard."

Brushing his thumb over the scar again, Sam asks, "You fell on it?"

"Nah, it bit me. Toothy fucker." Dean's eyes are closed and he's smiling, a picture of lazy relaxation in the striped pattern of sunlight and shadow through the vertical blinds.

"Smartass."

Sam pokes him playfully, earning a quiet huff of laughter in response, and lays his hand flat on Dean's back again. Dean's skin is sweat-slicked and warmed by the sun. Sam leans close, inhaling briefly, kisses the scar, lets his lips linger.

The taste of salt on his tongue, he pulls back and brushes his fingers upward, toward Dean's shoulder, tracing the line of his back as he would follow a road on a map. There's another scar there, three tiny lines just under the left shoulder blade.

Sam touches it softly, shifts up for a closer look, and asks, "And this one?"

"Raccoon."

"Raccoon?"

"Is there an echo in here? Yeah, it was a raccoon. You know, stripey masked furry critter?"

"How did you--" Sam stops and shakes his head. "Never mind. I don't want to know."

Dean twists his head to look at Sam, grinning crookedly. "You sure? It's a great story. Action, adventure, romance, roadkill, the works."

"Now I _really_ don't want to know."

Sam has to lean over to reach it and he takes his time, enjoying the feel of his own bare chest against Dean's back. He presses a kiss to the three tiny claw marks, draws away and touches the scar again, drags his fingers along the smooth curve of Dean's shoulder toward his neck, a meandering path like a river, slow and easy. He finds another on the back of Dean's neck. He rubs his thumb along the scar; it's a thin white score about two inches long, just below the hairline.

"What about this one?"

Dean doesn't answer immediately.

"Alien implant?" Sam guesses. "Brain surgery? Tapeworm?"

"Witch." The word is quiet and hoarse.

"A witch? What was she--" Sam stops, his hand fitted around the back of Dean's neck, the possibilities tumbling through his mind. "That must've been an ugly ceremony," he says.

Dean clears his throat and speaks louder. "You had a math test."

Sam blinks. "I -- what?"

"It was when we were living down in Odessa," Dean explains. His lifts his head a little, bending up into the caress of Sam's hand like a cat. "Dad and I went to take care of it, but you had a test. That's why you weren't there."

"You never told me." He tells himself he would have known, would have noticed if Dean came back from a job with a bandage on his neck, but all he remembers are long nights in that hot Texas house, schoolbooks on the kitchen table and one eye on the clock, heart leaping into his throat with the sound of every car passing on the road.

After a moment, Dean replies, "You didn't ask."

That he believes; he wouldn't have asked. A pang of guilt passes through him, and Sam leans down and runs his tongue along the length of the scar, closes his mouth over it an open kiss.

"You know," Dean says, "this scar fetish of yours is kind of weird."

"I don't have a scar fetish," Sam replies absently. He moves his lips across Dean's back, over the curve where his neck meets his shoulders, and there are no marks except a spray of freckles on tan skin, tiny like the nameless towns on maps nobody visits or remembers.

"Could've fooled me."

"I do not--"

"Do too, you kinky bastard."

Dean turns so that he's lying on his side, brings his hand up and threads it through Sam's hair. He's smiling in the afternoon sunlight, that smile that crinkles his eyes and dimples his cheeks, knowing and teasing and altogether too amused.

Sam pushes him onto his back and leans down to kiss the grin away and doesn't stop. Smirking mouth to stubbled jaw to sweaty hollow at the base of his neck, across his chest to the uneven circle where those crazy hillbilly psychopaths burned him, through the field of faint marks left by a blast of rock salt, down to the long, jagged line just above his right hip.

That's a new one, earned just last month in a haunted barn in Kentucky. Sam stitched it up, his hands covered in blood and his voice trembling as he ripped into Dean for being stupid and careless and clumsy, rambling nonsensically until Dean had reached down, put his hand on Sam's chin, tilted his face up, and said, _It's fine, Sam, nothing serious._

But it was serious enough to be stitched, serious enough to scar, and Sam lingers over it, telling himself that he can't taste fear and blood mingled with the sweat.

"I do not have a scar fetish," Sam repeats, breathless, his lips moving against Dean's skin.

When he looks up, Dean is watching him thoughtfully. "What's this, then?"

If he'd been more careful, he thinks, if his hands had been steadier, it wouldn't be such a scar. He wonders if it will fade with time, this landmark of his own panic and worry, sewn into Dean's skin in a thin white line, planted by a needle and sealed by a thread.

He murmurs, "Just finding my way around."

Tangled in Sam's hair, Dean's hand stills for moment. "Afraid of getting lost?"

"No." Sam slides up and curves one hand around the back of Dean's neck. "You?"

"Never."

Dean looks so solemn when he answers that Sam can't help but smile. "Sure you are. Scaredy-cat."

"Hey, punk, watch who you're calling names." Dean pushes Sam away indignantly, turns his head quickly when Sam tries to kiss him, tries to squirm away. He struggles half-heartedly and laughs when Sam catches his wrists and pins him down. "Okay, fine, if you're going to be that way about--"

Sam cuts him off with a kiss. "Shut up."

He releases Dean's wrists and lays his head down, tucked into the crook of Dean's shoulder. Sometimes it leaves a mark, he thinks, touching his fingers to Dean's belly, pressing five white spots that quickly fade. Hands on wrists, teeth on skin, lips and breath and arms in comforting hooks and legs tangled together, like pale landscapes branded by roads and cities and rivers, it all leaves a mark if you know where to look.

Dean's arm shifts, and he smacks Sam lightly on the shoulder. "Stop that."

"What?"

"Thinking."

"I'm not--"

"Yes, you are. You think too much."

Sam exhales sharply, a quiet laugh. "And that's a bad thing?"

"Right now?" Dean pauses, and in the pause Sam hears Dean's heartbeat and the traffic outside on the road, feels the sunlight slanting through the window and Dean's fingers moving slowly up and down his arm. "Yeah," Dean says, "right now, it's a bad thing."

"Okay." Can't argue with that. "Stopping."

"Good." Dean's voice is low and sleepy, already drifting away.

Sam closes his eyes. The afternoon wraps around him, scented like sunshine on skin and quiet and warm, and he falls asleep.


End file.
